Did Harrison Wells Create Metahumans on Purpose? 'The Flash's Mysterious Scientist May Have a Motive

So we can all agree that it seems like Harrison Wells is playing God at this point in The Flash, right? The new hit CW show's episode "Things You Can't Outrun" showed us that the particle accelerator creator and Barry's mentor Harrison Wells very clearly saw Barry Allen's accident into superhuman-hood, leaving us to wonder if he actually manufactured the event. But is Wells creating The Flash's metahumans on purpose? Why create The Flash and the multitude of other humans with special abilities? Why create The Mist and Multiplex? Now that is the question of the year.

The thing that also intrigues me is that after creating these metahumans, Harrison has now taken it upon himself to not only mentor Barry, but to protect him from any possible evil or anyone attempting to find out his identity for personal, scientific, or financial gain. Like when Harrison killed the billionaire Simon Stagg because he was a little curious about The Flash and what made him tick. It also seems like Harrison knows what happened to Caitlin's fiancé Ronnie (as do we all because he turns into one half of Firestorm in the DC Comics). So as per usual, everything goes back go that original question: Why? Why do any of this? What is the ultimate plan and is it nefarious in nature?

The Future Theory

The most obvious choice to go with is the the future theory. As we all know by this point, Harrison Wells has a secret lair where he can see a newspaper from the future that states The Flash is missing. If your biggest question to this huge tease of a scene is, "Who knew there were still newspapers in 10 years?" put your hand down. We'll get to that later.

So one possible explanation for why Harrison created The Flash is that Barry dies in the future (thus his missing status) and Harrison goes back in time to our present day to make sure that Barry does indeed become The Flash, properly mentor him, and get him ready for his potential demise so that it doesn't happen and he can instead save the world. That would explain why Harrison so quickly took Stagg's life when his curiosity got the better of him. Harrison did say The Flash was to be protected. The only caveat to this plan is that eventually, Harrison has to tell Barry that he's from the future.

The Evil Future Theory

Another theory is that Harrison could be an evil villain from the future, who comes back in time to see exactly how The Flash began and learn more about him, so that he can properly defeat him. But you may ask then why would he kill Stagg? Perhaps The Flash must be protected until a precise moment in the future when he must be killed in order for some kind of dastardly plan to be completed. Maybe this evil Harrison did create Barry, because him becoming The Flash is also part of the plan. Or maybe Harrison is so crazily evil he doesn't even know what he wants. OK, it's probably not that one.

The Scientific Study Theory

Maybe Harrison just really wanted to see what would happen if he created people with powers and wants to eventually experiment on all of them. That would explain why he wouldn't want anyone to find out their identities, but not how he has that future newspaper. Though if he's a brilliant scientist, maybe he can travel through time? It could also explain why he's ready to kill — it's all to protect his creations.

The Out Of His Hands Theory

Or maybe none of this was Harrison's plan at all. What if the good doctor is working under orders from some powerful being in the future that has very specific plans for The Flash and the rest of the metahumans and wanted to ensure they would be created under the right circumstances? That could be why he has the future paper and why he killed Stagg, he was just following orders like a good servant — or prisoner. Perhaps Harrison is the Peter Pettigrew to someone else's Voldemort, someone like Professor Zoom from the future? I know, I know, I keep going back to the future, but the time travel clues are hard to ignore.

Right now, no one knows why Harrison does what he does, or how involved he was in Barry's transformation. But isn't that the fun of watching The Flash?